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The future of the mortgage broking industry isn't going to be decided by commissions or if financial planning is a good fit for your business model or not – even if the much-vaunted property bubble bursts.
No, the future of our industry is going to be decided when a new generation of young, keen and capable brokers decide to enter this ageing industry.
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I hear the same conversations at PD days, I read the same articles day in and day out and don't know why we haven't addressed the most important issue facing our industry – identifying and training new recruits.
I look at the real estate industry and I ask myself, "Why do young people want to be a real estate agent, drive a flashy car, earn good money and see it as being sexy when you can be a broker and build a valuable business and enjoy a great life without working every Saturday and every night?"
I think everybody in this industry – brokers, lenders, aggregators, the franchisees – are responsible for letting our industry slip down the rankings as young peoples' preferred career and we really need to sell ourselves better.
For me, they don't know what they're missing out on!
Tired of the inaction, this year I created a forum to tackle this very issue.
We had great support with John McGrath as a guest speaker and other reputable real estate agents across the country attending to share their vision and how they prospect for leads and build their businesses.
The broker channel can learn a lot from the real estate industry as they really are a step ahead of our industry in terms of sales skills, thinking 'outside of the box' and being a point of difference to their competitors.
The constant theme and feedback from the event was 'As young brokers we don't have a good support group; we didn't think there were so many young brokers out there' and it got me thinking on two points. One, we're clearly not doing enough to attract them in the first place and – from the lessons learned from the real estate industry – there's not enough support if and when young brokers do actually enter our industry.
Since the event I have been fortunate to meet a handful of lenders who do care about this, who have the same vision and want to address the issue.
But as a collective, we do need to ask ourselves the question: are we doing enough to attract young blood?
Whether it is at university open days, lecturing, partnering with other industry bodies or promoting how fantastic broking can be, I think the time is right to open up the forum to the wider industry and address the most important issue facing us for the longevity of this industry.
As they say, the time is now! This can only benefit everyone in the industry and assist in succession planning for brokers, ensuring the third-party channel is viable for lenders and employing staff, and that aggregators still have a purpose.
So I challenge everyone to get more involved in the single most important issue we need to address.
